WATCH - Chitraganda, the full film by Rituparno Ghosh

Many people may be interested in watching this path breaking film by Rituparno Ghosh. So go ahead and enjoy!

Watch the full film on:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=An7ZZ5nIVEU

Also read:

My interview with Rituparno Gosh on 9^th February, 2013

http://juliadutta.blogspot.in/2013/04/rituparno-ghosh-shaking-you-out-of-your.html

My perspective of the film:

http://juliadutta.blogspot.in/2012/08/film-review-chitrangada-by-rituparno.html

 

The challenge of One

Reality stares you in the face, when you least expect it. 

An afternoon siesta, which is a luxury for only a few in urban India today, lead, Nandita, to wake with a dream she least expected to have. In her dream, she found herself in a different state of being, surrounded by nothing except a feeling of oneness with herself. She had around her, her mother, father, brothers and sisters, her partner of many long years and yet she knew that they had no meaning to her life. It was strangely liberating! Waking up, in a state of deep solitude and aloneness, she recollected her dream and instantly was bound once again to all her relations, with a sense of bewilderment as to why this dream appeared at all.

Recently, I fell ill with very high fever and was bed-ridden for two days burning in hell. As part of my self-healing body process, for the last three years I have not been to a Doctor for Cold and cough, fever and runny stomach, because, I firmly believe that these are the body’s own reaction to throwing out toxins from inside and in reality, they are good for the overall cleansing. So I depend on Crocin for fever, steam inhalation for cold and lots of water and mattha ( curd with a lot of water) for runny stomach. It has worked wonders for me. Given time and rest, I revive, fresh as the early morning flower in bloom. 

But the small family which is mine gathered around me panicking.  My partner called friends I am deeply attached to who in turn called me and pleaded I must see the family doctor right away. I promised but of course did not. My sister called from Kolkata and flew into a rage – how dare I be so cheeky to not listen to anyone?! Soon my elderly aunt followed with call from Kolkata, to say the same, only she tried to cajole me to see the doctor.

Of course I stood my ground and did not go! Next day, I was fine. The Crocin had done its work but I was washed out. I lay limp in bed for another day, then stood up on my feet and did what I love to do – went to work! My sister called my partner and said – “We are so far from her; I am so happy, you are there for her.”

Rubbish! Finally, we are all alone. There were many years I lived alone in Mumbai, absolutely alone. In one such time, I developed malaria and was “flying high” in the air with such high fever that when I stood up, I could not feel the ground. My neighbor, who had the keys to my flat, having not seen me over the weekend, turned the key to my flat to find, I was burning with fever. Along with her husband, she carried me literally to a Doctor and had my blood tested. I had malaria. For the next three days, they both took care of me, feeding me, bathing me, etc. They were the angels who helped me up again.

As such, like Nandita’s dream, one is actually alone, all the time. The connections we make in life, come and go. What we think permanent is constantly changing. What we do not expect shows up in moments when we do need them. Thus, the reality is permanent that nothing and nobody in our lives are there forever. Yet, we would find it hard to live, if we knew and accepted that we are, actually all alone.

There is a story, which is the last one in my collection of short stories called One. The book is called Until death do us part. The dilemma of being single, alone as it were in a society where we are never alone, so to say, is the theme of the story. Yet, even in a crowd we are alone; by ourselves, too, we are alone. But, when we think about it, it is difficult to put ourselves in such an isolated space. It challenges our thoughts and shakes our very being.

It only takes a shift in our thought process that makes a reality, more acceptable. I wonder what you think is the “sense of aloneness” from your perspective, from where you are in your life’s journey?

Until death do us part is available on:

http://www.amazon.com/Until-Death-Do-Part-ebook/dp/B009X1DKYU/ref=sr_1_16?ie=UTF8&qid=1351623411&sr=8-16&keywords=xynobooks

Suspicious nannies for writers in FB

Picture credit: www.kevingreenstein.com

Despite the Indian Government’s interference in the privacy of individuals, on the Netzone, fakes, thugs and possible terrorist continue to thrive.

“Currently two government spy agencies — the Intelligence Bureau (IB), and the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) — plus seven others, including the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), the Narcotics Control Bureau, DRI, National Intelligence Agency, CBDT (tax authority), Military Intelligence of Assam and JK and Home Ministry — are authorised to intercept and monitor citizens’ calls and emails, under the guidelines laid down by the Supreme Court, The Indian Telegraph Act 1985, Rule 419(A) and other related legislation. (The Hindu, June 21, 2013, India’s surveillance project may be as lethal as PRISM by Shalini Singh. See Link below)

We are all disappointed by this. Our privacy is completely at stake. In fact, we have none. As citizens of India, we are appalled at what we have just read, but as Netzens we are facing another threat, of being exploited for deceitful purposes.

Take for instance, a recent happening when two authors wanting to go that extra mile, sought the services of an editor, found on Facebook. Apparently, the person professed that their skill at editing was good, because they had already been doing it for a while. Besides, they also had self-published books to their credit.

The Invoice sent to from a gmail account was not on a Company letterhead. It did not have an address but did have mobile number. There was no cause for worry it seemed although bills were asked to be made in Company letterheads, for payments to be received. These requests were not fulfilled.

Indeed, it became a matter of high probability that there is actually a ruckus going on, on FB. With all and everyone joining the band wagon as wannable authors, there is good money to be made by independent editors floating around in Social Media.

The modus oparandi , is very simple. For the uninitiated it gives out the stench a bit late though, which is exactly the reason for this post.

Imagine: Someone writes to you and says you have a great book; it’s bold and path-breaking. You respond with a quick thank you! But only if the editing was done better, the stories would have been more powerful comes the quick reply.  You hurry to say, you had too many rejection letters; the manuscript had been lying in your computer for more than 6 years; you needed to allow the book to see the light of day! And of course, you would take more care this time.

You realise that in a sunrise industry, like Publishing in India, editors don’t come cheap. With Indian authors writing in English, Literary Agents have mushroomed like never before. Everyone wants a piece of the pie, so why not your editor too?

After all, as much as they are greedy, so are you. You too want to become an author; a God out there! And they have what it takes to make you one. They can edit, format, help you upload your book on Kindle Amazon.com and then help you with the Digital campaign to increase the sales of your book. No, it does not matter, that there are spelling mistakes, language errors and really you had to spend two days to undo their mistakes, once the ms was returned to you.

Shell out the bucks and make quick bucks yourself, is the overall message.

The Netzone is for everyone. It takes all kinds to make the Netzone work. Even those who might not measure up to your standards, have a place in this Cloud.

Now that my manuscript is protected with my publisher, Contract signed and delivered, I don’t mind sharing a few lessons I learned myself, the hard way.

If you want to use the services of an editor, before you have sent your manuscript to your publisher, you need to watch these steps:

(a)    First and foremost, definitely prefer to go with someone you know, personally, or is recommended by a friend, whom you know well, not only on Social Media.

(b)   Second, the editor is from my city

(c)    Visit them, meet them and talk to them, not only on phone. FB Friends, LinkedIn, Twitter, it’s virtual, not real friends, so you need to watch out.

(d)   Insist on Invoice made out on Company Letterhead.

(e)   In case the editor is out of city and has sent an Invoice in a personal name, address is a must and the address has to be verified by someone living in that city, where the editor is.

(f)     Insist on bills. Pay only to Company account.

(g)    Pay only by Cheque

(h)   Accept no excuse for delay in your manuscript; they won’t accept delay in your payment either.

(i)      Insist on final payments only after you have received your final manuscript, AND, you are satisfied with their work.

(j)     Preserve all documents related to the interaction between you as an author and the editor. Email, is a legal document.

Hope this helps my friends in India, and the world, all of whom have a story to tell.

We need to watch over our work, before it sees the light of day. The Government is NOT the best nanny in this case, we can depend upon always. Nor is the nanny on FB, in wolves clothing.

Good luck!

Links and references:

The Hindu, June 21, 2013, India’s surveillance project may be as lethal as PRISM  by Shalini Singh
http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/indias-surveillance-project-may-be-as-lethal-as-prism/article4834619.ece

Just read: 8 Gmail Hacks That Will Change The Way You Use Email

http://www.buzzfeed.com/danoshinsky/8-gmail-hacks-that-will-change-the-way-you-use-email
Just released news: FB makes the start of verified pages for celebrities; the rest will follow soon: http://newsroom.fb.com/News/619/Verified-Pages-and-Profiles

The freedom to Be - Pandita Ramabai

Book cover Rewriting History

Over two months have passed since I have held two books in my hand. One, more recently, Against the madness of Manu, Dr B R Ambedkar’s writings on Brahminical Patriarchy, selected and introduced by well known scholar, Dr Sharmila Rege. The other, Dr Uma Chakravarti’s Rewriting history – The life and times of Pandita Ramabai. I have not read two books that make me revert back and forth to each other, so often. Both books are extremely engaging and very scholarly. But, today, I will write of Pandita Ramabai, because, she was blessed with parents who broke the cast, and caste rules, and brought up a daughter who cannot be forgotten to the history of women, who were scholarly and independent, who were able to be free flowing and to invent a word –“un-castable”.

Ramabai’s father, Anant Shastri Dongre, was born a Brahmana and lettered in Sanskrit which was a language that could not be taught to anyone outside the Brahmana caste, nor could it be taught to women. However, Dongre broke the first law by trying to teach his wife, Sanskrit but her family came hammer and tong on him forcing him to abort the effort. Many years later, now a widower, Dongre, married the 9 year old Lakshmibai, (Dongre himself was at that time, 44 years old), and found a keen learner of Sanskrit in her. Under much pressure for his non-conformist behaviour, Dongre preferred to move into the forest and start an ashram, which was managed by the couple. It is here that Pandita Ramabai was born, and her first letters were studied in Sanskrit and of course the sacred books of the Hindus. Having gone out of pocket, the family now began their pilgrimage around places, a pauranikars, that is public narrators of the Puranas. This lifestyle also was accompanied by a life of sannyasa, which means, the family lived on alms provided by the people to whom they taught the Puranas. A life of a wandering minstrel brought Ramabai close to knowledge and renunciation, both, at one and the same time. After many years of travel and starvation, Anant Shastri Dongre, performed jala samadhi, a practice by which he drowned himself to be shortly followed by his grief-stricken wife, Lakshmibai. The children, Srinivas and Ramabai, survived, even as the eldest sister passed away and in 1878, arrived in Calcutta.

For the intellectual imaginative cream in Calcutta, Ramabai, unmarried and knowledgeable became the symbol of the return of Maitreye and Gargi, who followed their husband Yagnavalkya, to the forest to seek Knowledge, leaving all possessions behind. On the behest of Keshav Chandra Sen, who founded the Brahmo Samaj in Bengal, Ramabai, began to study the Vedas, which were gifted to her by Sen. The Vedas, Upanishads and the Vedanta, and the Brahma Sutras were texts which were not allowed to be read by women, even if they were Brahmanas, which she was.

“IX.18. Women have no right to study the Vedas. That is why their Sabskars (rites) are performed without Veda Mantras. Women have no knowledge of religion because they have no right to know the Vedas. The uttering of the Veda mantras is useful for removing sin. As women cannot utter the Veda mantras they are as untruth is”. (Quotation from Manu, Against the madness of Manu, selected and introduced by Sharmila Rege, p.121)

Indeed, the reading of these texts caused much dissatisfaction in Ramabai, because it became clear that the status of women and low caste men, were seen very poorly. Her engagement with Bengal’s intellectuals about uplifting women became a focus. The Hindu religious texts were an eye-opener for her. She saw the dominance of Brahmana patriarchy through them. It is at this juncture that she met with another tragedy in her life, that being the death of her only surviving sibling, Srinivas, to an illness. Alone, in the world, she accepted the marriage proposal from her brother’s friend, from Sylhet, now in Bangladesh. Bipin Bihari Medhavi, was a sudra, and her marriage with him in the Civil Court, proved another slap on the face of Brahamanical tradition, of endogamy and marriage by performing religious rites. In her own words, “Having lost faith in the religion of my ancestors, I married a Bengali man of shudra caste” (Rewriting History, The life and times of Pandita Ramabai, by Uma Chakravarti, p. 310) The marriage lasted for only 3 – 4 years and Ramabai was left a widow, with a daughter to fend for. She returned to her place of origin, this time with child, in 1882, when the reformists in Poona, Maharashtra called her back. But in orthodox Poona, as a widow, engaged with talking of uplifting women in Public discourses, the scorn of the Brahmana community in Poona was not far. Indeed, even the wives of reformers like Justice Ranade wrote with unabashed venom, fearing that, she might now convert to Christianity, far worse than marrying even a sudra.

“We cannot tolerate such sacrilege. What an accursed thing. Her father had turned her into a devotee and wedded her to the heavenly bridegroom Shri Dwarkanath. And yet, this wretch married a Bengali baboo and polluted herself. And did she build a home for herself after all? No fear. She brought utter ruin on everyone connected with her and is now out to pollute the whole world. (Rewriting History, The life and times of Pandita Ramabai, by Uma Chakravarti, p. 313)

It is at this moment, having seen through the Hindu texts and also being completely alone in the world along with her daughter, that Ramabai, began to feel the dire need for a personal God. In Father Goteh, a Chitpavan Brahmana convert himself, Ramabai found an answer, in Christ. Egged on by the involvement of Miss Hurford, a missionary, who introduced her to the Bible in Marathi, she found her peace with Christ, when she converted to Christianity on her visit to England, in 1883, despite the fact that her companion to England, Anandibai, having nearly throttled her, before she herself committed suicide in St Mary’s Home in Wantage, for fear that, the outlandish Ramabai, would yet again do the forbidden, that is to convert to Christianity.

An outcry followed in India, as soon as news came in of the conversion. They damned her as ‘fickle’, ‘peculiarly female’, meaning she was sentimental and not rational, as her scholarly mind should have made her.

Leave that as it may, she was about to encounter patriarchy in the Church as well. In September, 1884, Ramabai joined the Women’s College, Cheltenham, as a student and teacher of Marathi language. She was to teach the language to young English boys and women but the Bishop of Lahour and Bombay struck it down causing Ramabai to react sharply. She was not going to accept these racist rules, which forbade her, an Indian woman to teach English boys.

“I have a conscience and a mind of my own. I must myself think and do everything which God has given me the power of doing...I have with great effort freed myself from the yoke of Indian priestly tribe so I am not at present willing to place myself under another similar yoke by accepting everything that comes from the priests as authorised command of the Most High...” (Rewriting History, The life and times of Pandita Ramabai, by Uma Chakravarti, p. 322)

In 1886, Ramabai went to America and stayed there for two years, leaving her daughter Manorama with the sisters at Wantage. In these two years she travelled almost 50,000 kilometres across America, addressing hundreds of meetings, lecturing, writing, speaking, entertaining, thinking and raising funds for an upper caste widow’s home in India, because the plight of the higher caste widow in India was pitiable.

If as Dr B R Ambedkar, in his paper read out first before the anthropology seminar of Dr A A Goldenweiser at Columbia University, New York, on 9 May 1916, concluded in ‘[14] Thus the superposition of endogamy of exogamy means caste.’(Against the madness of Manu, selected and introduced by Sharmila Rege, p.86), [16] The problem of caste, then, ultimately resolves itself into one of repairing the disparity between the marriageable units of the two sexes within it...The husband may die before the wife and create a surplus woman, who must be disposed of, else through intermarriage she will violate the endogamy of the group...Thus, both the surplus woman and the surplus man constitute a menace to the caste if not taken care of;...’ [18] First: burn her on the funeral pyre of her deceased husband...[19] The second remedy is to enforce widowhood on her for the rest of her life.’(Ibid, pp 87 - 88)

This enforced widowhood, was pitiable, both in terms of the fact that the period of this widowhood could be long due to child marriage and the restrictions imposed on the widow, were inhuman. Thus, in March 1889 Pandita Ramabai, inaugurated the first Home for widows of upper caste women, called Sarada Sadan in Bombay, where widows could come to stay instead of remaining back in their families. This Home would be a place where women would be encouraged to have a new understanding of themselves, bringing the joy of new life, unlike the joyless life, widows were expected to lead, by Hindu society dictates.

In the same year she returned to India from America, then she moved to Poona, in 1890, where her work was looked at with much suspicion especially because by now she was seen as a convert, who in D K Karve’s words, “From the orthodox point of view, even the remarriage of widows was not so objectionable as their conversion to Christianity”. In her later years at Mukti Sadan, Kedgaon, the inmates were visited by a Pentecostal preacher and for a period began to ‘speak in tongues’ as if experiencing an ‘awakening’. This however was short lived and the girls trained in many crafts and lettered too, went back to singing Marathi kirtanas composed by the Christian poet Waman Narayan Tilak and printing the Bible in Marathi.

Ramabai died in 1922, suffering yet one more loss in her life, that of the death of her only daughter, Manorama. By now she was entirely deaf. But had changed the plight of widows in India and fought for equal rights for them. Indeed, the best obituary was from D.K. Karve, who had married one of the first widow inmates of Sarada Sadan.

For history to obliterate her name or to put her in the backburner would be equally participated by Hindus and Christians alike, for Pandita Ramabai, followed her heart and proceeded to a life free of both patriarchies, whether born and bred in the Hindu texts or in the Christian Church. In a way, she Indianised Christianity for the benefit of Indian women and widows in particular, in another way, she westernised the Hindu scriptures and societal dictates for the same group of women. And in that she stood on her own stead.

It would be impossible for women to do the same however, and notwithstanding what patriarchies in any domain do to erase or forget by omission, Pandita Ramabai, as women, we will not commit a heinous crime, like sati, or a forced widowhood, from the clutches of which she worked tireless towards and succeeded to make the difference. 

(c) Julia Dutta June 16, 2013

To buy:

Rewriting History – The life and times of Pandita Ramabai by Uma Chakravarti
http://www.dialabook.in/books/rewriting-history:-the-life-and-times-of-pandita-ramabai_1_18944.html

Against The madness of Manu by Sharmila Rege

http://www.bookadda.com/books/against-madness-manu-sharmila-rege-818905953x-9788189059538

:

Bhoolbhuliaya baba, tujhe laakh salaam!

Nestled behind the Qutab Minar, within walking distance from Mehrauli DTC Bus Stand, is the Dargah of the 13th century, Sufi saint, Khwaja Qutbuddin Bakhtiar Kaki. This is the venue for the annual Phoolwalon-ki-sair Festival.

Khwaja Qutbuddin Bakhtir Kaki, said to be in the same line of Sufi Saints from Ajmer Sherif, lies quietly in the dargah. People say about him, “You, love silence”, the “you” meaning to refer to the Sufi Saint.

The road, to the Dargah is lined with vendors and food stalls. And people, quintessential as they come. Unlike both Ajmer and the Dargah at Nizamuddin, in Delhi, the Dargah of Qutbuddin Bakhtiar is quiet and not hounded by too many people, although, many from India and abroad visit him regularly.  

Women are not allowed inside the dargah and must be satisfied to pray through the exquisitely carved in marble, windows, which allow the women to see the dargah, without being visible to the men from inside. So yours truly too, joined the women and prayed holding the marble veiled window.

 The dargah complex houses graves of later Mughal emperors, Bahadur Shah I, Shah Alam II, and Akbar II, in an adjacent marble enclosure. To the left of the dargah, lies Moti Masjid, a small mosque, built for private prayer by the son of Aurangzeb, Bahadur Shah I.

The Slave Dynasty ruler of the Delhi Sultanate, Balban's tomb was constructed here in the 13th century. It is architecturally important structure as it is the first true arch in Indo-Islamic architecture. Another tomb, that of Balban's son, Khan Shahid, who died before he could be crowned, is also located nearby in Mehrauli Archeological Park.

A baoli or stepwell known as Rajon Ki Baoli was constructed in 1506 during Sikandar Lodhi's reign. It was used to store water though it is now completely dried and is now known as Sukhi Baoli (dry well).

The Jamali Kamali mosque was built in 1528,in honour of the Sufi saint Shaikh Hamid bin Fazlullah, also known as Dervish Shaikh Jamali Kamboh Dihlawi or Jalal Khan. The saint's tomb built in 1536 upon his death is adjacent to the mosque.

The Adham Khan's Tomb was constructed by Emperor Akbar in memory of his foster brother and general Adham Khan in 1566. The tomb, also known as Bhulbhulaiyan, as one could get lost in the labyrinth of its passages, it was later used by the British as a residence, rest house and even as a police station. Close to Adham Khan's tomb, lies that of another Mughal General, Muhammad Quli Khan,later it served as the residence of Sir Thomas Metcalfe, Governor-General’s Agent at the Mughal court. The Mehrauli Archaeological Park spread over 200 acre, adjacent to Qutb Minar site was redeveloped in 1997.

Much of the matter you have read above is thanks to Wikipedia. What is not possible to capture in words is the experience of the dargah as well as the old world feeling that go with this dargah.

My effort has been to capture that for my readers. Enjoy!

See more: https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/118112130944380341626/albums/5882511926650687057

Rituparno Ghosh: Shaking you out of your comfort zone

Miss not the quiet by lanes of Kolkata, for oft they conceal great minds; although, if you ask, even the paan-bidi wala, he will lead you to their home. Nor must your eyes overlook the aesthetically done with beautiful antique furniture and large paintings, dimly lit dark rooms, whose walls tell stories, no less than half a century old.  In one such home, resides, India’s pride, the brilliant film maker, Rituparno Ghosh.  His name and work go far beyond the domain of the ordinary to reach out to the sky, where freedom of expression weds the colours and hues of human relationships, in its diverse alternate shades.

Engaged with presenting human relationships from two points, loneliness and companionship, finding a friend in unlikely places, indeed, all of Rituparno Ghosh’s films talk recurring same subject and bring the viewer to address realities they do not acknowledge consciously. Questioning the institution of marriage, it’s happily ever after cover which hide deeper schism between couple, the film maker’s representation of the urban middle class families is unprecedented on Bengali screen.

“I was the first at least in Bengali films to deal with the urban middle class home in a manner that some poignant truths of their lives came out which have not been spoken of before. For the first time the audience was watching things that had remained buried within them; in fact, there was a denial of this truth. So in a way it was some kind of getting into the unchartered waters, at the same time dealing with loneliness and companionship and questioning the whole notion of the two.”

In Dahan, the first film that talked about marital rape, or the National Film Award winner, Unishe April (19^th April) depicting the stressed relationship between a divorced couple, and the strained mother-daughter relationship, Utsab, which show complex set of problems in a family who have gathered for the annual Durgapujo, or Shubho Muhurat,  showing parallel relationships running from past to present, a sleuth and a victim find companionship in each other, even as a medley of human emotions, compassion and empathy come to the fore and leave the audience with much food for thought, there is no right and wrong, no judgment made at any time. This reflects Rituparno Ghosh’s own aspiration as non-judgmental. His films, in Hindi, English and Bengali, are his voice to artistically reach that destination.

When asked whether he thinks a committed live-in relationship is better than a marriage, he is wise.

“I don’t condemn marriage nor is it something I am immediately elated about; it is how you want to conduct yourself, and we can’t preempt our behavior at any stage. Marriage is not about two individuals; it is two families. When you are staying together there are certain odds you are facing. Are you staying together just to challenge the institution of marriage, or are you really living together happily? Quite often, just because, we have chosen to live together over marriage, there is an extra effort to prove that we are happy, which may be artificial at times. In the face of being marginalized for living lives that do not conform to society, it is entirely upon our fortitude and patience, our  ability to complement each other that make the relationship last.”

Rituparno Ghosh (49) is blessed with fingers that give away his parents’ profession as artists. These long, perfectly manicured hands learned their first lessons in film making with his father, who made low budget documentary films, converting the family’s dining table into his editing table! Further, his love of cinema took a serious turn when at 12, in 1975, Doordarshan Kolkata started airing Hindi and Bengali cinema on Sunday evenings. ‘It was then only a matter of scale,’ he says when armed with the technique of making films and ten years in advertising experience, the final push came while shooting a documentary, Vande Mataram with Shabana Azmi. She suggested that he take up making films for the larger screen. Hirer Angti, a children’s film, was his first.  He was young and hungry for fame and recognition. With Unishe April, his second, he rose to become one of India’s best known film-writer and Directors.  From 1994 to 2010, almost year on year, Rituparno Ghosh won Awards at the national and international level.

With his latest film, Chitrangada (A), released in Kolkata, in August, 2012, now available across India, on DVD, from 11^th February, 2013, Rituparno Ghosh has ventured upon a yet again widely discussed subject of same sex relationships and the Sex Reassignment Surgery (SRS).

“After Article 377, it has actually given visibility to homosexuality and there is a clear line drawn in the minds of people between homosexuality and heterosexuality. What lies with the entire gender matrix of various kinds of sexual desires had not been discussed before on screen. Chitrangada wanted to talk about the liminality of one’s desire to belong to a particular sexuality and the entire debate of gender and sex and the need to have an altered body, which everyone can wish to have. We are all working toward sculpting our own gender identity; women alter their bodies at Beauty Parlours, men get six packs. No transformation is actually over, it is a process; it is fluid.”

Clearly, Rituparno Ghosh’s mind is larger than life. The world will confer, in life and on the silver screen. 

This article by Julia Dutta was first published in Atelier India, March 2013 Issue of  the magazine. If you are not in India, write to: Creative Nest Media Pvt. Ltd, M-66, Punj House, Outer Circle, Connaught Place, New Delhi - 110 001 Email:info@creativenestmedia.comAdd caption

Madhulika Liddle: Engraved in Stone

You might have looked hard at the Jaipur Book Festival for her, or even expected her to be seen at book readings in Delhi, but she is best found in Wikipedia prominently figuring as the author who created  the 17^th century, detective Muzaffar Jang, placed historically in the Mughal period in India. With her debut novel in The Englishman’s Cameo, Madhulika Liddle secured her place in the history of the literary world of Indian authors writing in English, to give India its first detective placed in a period.

Liddle (40) began writing when she was 6 years old!

 “My mother used to subscribe to Femina and I thought it was the perfect magazine, a story here, a recipe there, some fashion and so I emulated it and had my own Madhu’s Magazine, which had a story, a grotty recipe, some drawings, it had a bit of fashion with little swashes of material hanging out...!”

The journey with words had begun but it was much later, in her late twenties that Liddle began to look at writing more seriously.

Into her third book featuring Muzaffar Jang, the latest being Engraved in Stone, Liddle’s books sell even before the launch. The sheer romance of a period equals the love and addiction people have developed for her main character. The language is excellent and the plot so engaging that the reader is kept hooked till the end.

Madhulika Liddle studied Hotel Management. But it was her historian older sister who became her source of inspiration for writing in the Maurya period. Besides, when her brother-in-law, passionate about historical detective novels brought into the family, trunk loads of novels, Madhulika Liddle got hooked. It is then she decided that she was going to create one herself.

“When I read these books I found that in almost every period of history there is a detective - there is a medieval Chinese detective, a Welsh monk, an Egyptian eunuch and I thought why not one from India? If there has to be one, then, I must create one.”

And bingo! Muzaffar Jang was born! The enormous amount of literature and research material available on the period helped to write stories placed in the Mughal period.

The creation of a detective placed in a period, is not the only first that has graced Liddle. The first prize at Femina’s thriller contest with her story, Silent Fear, now a part of her latest humour short story collection, My Lawfully Wedded Husband was followed by a first at The Commonwealth Broadcasting Association, with The Morning Swim; again a first at Sulekha.com, Crossing Paths. A Suitor for Saraswati was the second runner-up in The India Smiles Contest. Also, in Zubaan  21 Under 40 short stories collection All this added a philip to her confidence and she realised that she could write stories that people liked to read.

Madhulika Liddle  is a prolific writer and has four published books, a few short stories, and plans to create a series of books placed in Delhi between the period of 11^th CE and 1947.when India got its independence.  She wishes to carry on her Muzaffer Jang stories, the first of which, The Englishman’s Cameo, was also published in French by Editions Philippe Picquier, as Le Camée Anglais. Indeed, Muzaffar Jang is an extension of Madhulika Liddle, with his love of books, birds and curiosity. But he may begin to sulk soon as his creator aspires to publish another series of detective novels with a different central character! Madhulika Liddle has her mind full with a number of other books and stories she wishes to write in the near future

“I would like to be known as an author who writes stories in different genre and not only one, including socially relevant stories. The story which won the CBA competition is one such. I am hoping to bring out a collection of stories which showcase this aspect of my writing.”

Liddle follows a strict discipline. She does at least 1000 words a week day. She reads a lot, does not watch Television and writes throughout the day. She also writes frequent on her blog on cinema, before 1970.

She regards her husband, Tarun Bhandari as her greatest support. It was he who stood by her when she decided to leave her job to pursue a career in writing.

“He is the sweetest thing in life,” says Liddle coyly. “Actually I would not have been an author today if not for him. He is my first level editor, and the in-house marketing person for my books.”

Cheers to Tarun for supporting the lady’s success, as India’s first historical detective novelist. Indeed, Madhulika Liddle’s name is engraved in stone for giving birth to Muzaffar Jang, from India. 

The article by Julia Dutta was first published in the March 2013 issue: 

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